By: trekker
CHAPTER 1: THE MISSION
Starfleet and the Federation Council believe it is time to expand our borders beyond known space. The U.S.S. Columbia has been dispatched, along with six other Starfleet ships, to scout the space beyond the Federation's most remote border in the beta quadrant. My science officer was thrilled at the beginning of this assignment; there is much to be seen in the great unknown.
We may be greeted with hostility; we may not be greeted at all. We don't know what to expect. Since each ship was assigned a different region to explore, we will be out of contact with anyone for a long time. We have not yet found anything of interest in the past two days except for a G2 class star. Nothing special.
This is an eight-year mission to gather everything we can and then go home to examine it. I just hope that time isn't wasted.
Captain Eric Ramon finished his entry and then started walking to mess hall. It was 2400 (12 o'clock in the morning) , so he still had three more hours before he would be needed on the bridge. Or anywhere else, he thought, as the turbolift (elevator) door hissed closed. When they opened again, he found Ensign Linda Pierce waiting for him. "Good morning, ensign", he said cheerfully.
"Good morning, captain. I wanted to tell you about something I found in astrometrics (room where crew can analyze deep space phenomena. Located eight decks below the bridge) twenty minutes ago. There seems to be a star system about two light-years from our present position. We have already changed course and will arrive at 2350 hours (11:50 PM)."
"Good work ensign. Show me where it is", replied the captain.
Two minutes later, they were in astrometrics. "This," said Ensign Pierce, "is the star system. Now look at this." She enlarged the picture so that it appeared more clearly than just a bright dot marking the presence of a star. Now they could clearly see at least three planets; two of them looked as if they could have been the Earth, give or take rearranging the continents. The third planet was indistinct. The presence of two Class-M worlds in one solar system had eluded Starfleet's search efforts for quite some time. The Romulans had been the first known culture to colonize one of these rare star systems. "Romulus" and "Remus" were the Federation's names for those planets in reference to the mythical twin sons of the Roman war god, Mars. They turned out to be fitting names shortly thereafter, during the Romulan War against Earth and Vulcan.
Hopefully these worlds would not be so hostile.
"Thank you for showing me, ensign", Ramon said after taking this into account, "Continue your scans of the star system." Then he turned around and walked out of the room. He tapped his combadge, "Captain to the bridge."
"Bridge here", answered Lieutenant Commander Steven Boslin. Boslin had the center seat for this shift. He was looking forward to his promotion to the rank of Commander, which would be coming soon because of his performance on a previous mission. He had saved the entire away team from a Jem'hadar invasion force on Sherman's Planet, during the Dominion War by acting as a decoy so the away team could complete repairs on their crashed shuttlecraft. He suffered a lot of bruises and bloody scrapes from falling down every time the ground on either side of him blew up as well as having some stone fragments embedded in his skin when the rock formation he hid behind for cover and a very brief respite exploded because of the gunfire. He had barely escaped with his life. His promotion would be on stardate 54527.1. He could not wait.
"What's our status?"
"We are on course for a nearby star system. Our ETA (Estimated Time to Arrival) is 2350 hours. No sign of any other ship in the area, and our course is unimpeded."
"Keep me posted. Captain out."
2 hours later. . .
"Captain on the bridge!" Lieutenant Yurik Sloane announced from her science station as the turbolift doors hissed shut and Captain Ramon strode toward his chair. Boslin moved over to the second-in-command seat to the left of the Captain's chair.
"At ease, everyone. Commander, report"
"We dropped out of warp 200,000 kilometers from the nearest Class-M planet. We are presently in a geostationary (directly over one point on the planet and not moving any significant distance from that position) orbit, 10,000 kilometers above the planet's surface on the night side of the terminator (the border between the light side and the night side of a planet)," Sloane reported.
"Thank you, Commander," Ramon replied as he sat down, "Lieutenant Sloane, how are the scans coming? Anything interesting?"
"Scans have commenced. The planet has a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, and a carbon-based eco-system; not dissimilar to our own Earth. The amount of pollution suggests that the culture is space-capable, or at least very close to it. However, a class-1 scan will take several days to complete. The data received from the scan so far is available in astrometrics."
"Thank you, lieutenant. I give you all the time you need. I will be in astrometrics reviewing the data. Commander Boslin, you have the bridge. Keep me posted." That said, Ramon promptly stood and walked into the turbolift, "Deck 9." The doors closed.
The ship in this story is named in memory of the Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-107), which exploded over Texas, USA during its re-entry on February 1, 2003. The captain is named in memory of the shuttle's Israeli crew member: Ilan Ramon.